say here, that
the subdued manner and tone in which Mr. Tazewell spoke of Judge
Marshall would convey a stronger impression of the character of the
judge than any mere words of eulogy could well do. For his person and
abilities he cherished the most profound respect and admiration. Even of
the Life of Washington, which it was the fashion of the young democrats
of my day to laugh at for the grammatical blunders and inverted English
that marred the first edition of that work, Tazewell, who, though never
eminent in elegant composition, always wrote good English, and saw all
the faults of the work, still put a high value upon it as I certainly
now do myself; and within a year of his death, when he was told an
author was about to publish a history of the administration of
Washington, he observed: "What can _he_ tell that Judge Marshall has not
told a great deal better already?" Yet, from the beginning of Mr.
Tazewell's career to its close, they differed from each other on most of
the great constitutional questions of their times. Candor compels me to
say, however, that the decisions of the judge in the case of Maculloch
against the Bank of Maryland, and in the case of Cohens against the
State of Virginia, greatly disappointed him; and after their
promulgation, though he still entertained feelings of high respect for
his abilities, he would hardly have offered in honor of the judge that
famous sentiment which he proposed at the Decatur dinner, and which
elicited so much remark at the time.

But it was probably in his association with Chancellor Wythe, who loved
and petted the promising boy, the son of his old neighbor in
Williamsburg, whom he had taken from the dying bedside of another old
neighbor, that Tazewell formed his taste for profound research, and his
determination to master the law as a science. Wythe, above all our early
statesmen, was deeply learned in the law, had traced all its doctrines
to their fountain-heads, delighted in the year-books from doomsday down;
had Glanville, Bracton, Britton, and Fleta bound in collects; had all
the British statutes at full length, and was writing elaborate decisions
every day, in which, to the amazement of county court lawyers, Horace
and Aulus Gellius were sometimes quoted as authorities. And it is worthy
of note, that Tazewell, affectionately attached as he was to Wythe, did
not adopt his prejudices or antipathies, nor those peculiarities of
punctuation and the disuse of capi